Tag: ECW

Halloween’s just around the corner so I figured I’d watch something Halloweeny in celebration. For whatever reason I decided to check out this random episode of ECW from Halloween night 2006. Let’s get extremely spooky!

This is a show I’d heard a lot about back in the day when I was into real sleazy garbage wrestling and shit like that because of the Taipei Deathmatch but I’d never actually seen it until I got the WWE Network and watched it, which automatically makes it 90% less sleazy than it would have been if I’d traded a 3rd generation tape of the Big Japan Supermarket Deathmatch for a dubbed copy of this, but whatever. Let’s get extreme!

Here we’ve got “The Human Suplex Machine” Taz taking on Buh Buh Ray Dudley in a more or less straight up wrestling match. Don’t worry, this is still ECW though so there’s some post-match mayhem with crutches and steel chairs for those of you who don’t want to see Buh Buh Ray Dudley apply hammerlocks and shit like that.

I got a request to review the main event from this episode of Hardcore TV and figured that it’s been awhile since I looked at mid-90s ECW so I might as well just watch the entire episode. So here it is, the April 2, 1996 installment of Hardcore TV, which I believe was filmed the day before.

This is from the first episode of ECW. There’d apparently been a couple pilot episodes before this but this is their first shot at the big time and they kick things off with a tournament for the newly created Television Championship that two guys had already held prior to this show taking place.

We start things off with the Public Enemy making their way out to the ring for their Tag Team Title match against the challengers of Sabu and The Tazmaniac. This footage is from Double Tables, but because I’m watching it on the WWE Network instead of a VHS cassette, “Here Comes the Hotstepper,” has been replaced by some generic hip-hop beat. The crowd doesn’t seem to mind though and dutifully puts their hands in the air and waves them as if they just don’t care all the same.

We get a cold open with a fortune teller (Shelly Martinez/Ariel/That Lady With the Boobs/etc.) using tarot cards to recap what happened on Raw the night before. Apparently ECW invaded and Sabu left John Cena bleeding. Tonight there will be a tag team event pitting Van Dam & Angle against Edge & Orton. For all the dumb shit WWE’s ECW did I think this is honestly a pretty cool way to recap a show.

Two days after ECW’s One Night Stand their new, weekly TV program debuted on Sci-Fi. This is that show. While One Night Stand was, in my opinion, a pretty damn good show, the ECW shows that appeared on Sci-Fi have a reputation of being pretty terrible. So let’s get EXTREMELY SCIENCE FICTIONY!